Robert Colvile is a writer and senior comment editor at the Telegraph, who cares more about politics and policy than is probably healthy - for his newest pieces, please see here. He tweets as @rcolvile.

Why a recession is the best time to start a family

My colleague Iain Martin is pinning his hopes on a credit-crunch baby boom to save the economy. But there's a more selfish reason to get reproducing – it could well be the best thing for your child.

On the face of it, this seems unlikely – surely families should wait to have kids until they can afford to feed and clothe them, not to mention send them to expensive schools or tutoring sessions?

Not so, says Malcolm Gladwell, in his new book Outliers (which I've been reviewing for the Telegraph). One of the reasons for the success of the generation born in the 1930s in America, he believes, was that they came after the economic and demographic boom of the 1920s.

The secret was – their parents' finances apart – that the country had built all these schools and hired all these teachers, but now had fewer pupils to put through them. Instead of being stuffed into overcrowded classrooms, the small cohort of Depression-era kids had attention and resources lavished on them, not to mention finding it ridiculously easy to get into decent universities.

Whether this applies now is a slightly different question – after all, if Iain's credit crunch baby boom does materialise, new children will have the worst of both worlds, struggling to stand out in overcrowded schools and universities at the same time as their parents are unable to make up the deficit by paying for music lessons or educational holidays in the Med.

But if the birth rate does indeed fall, it's worth taking a punt that the bad times won't last forever. It might be a struggle for a few years, but think how much more of your nursing care your young millionaire-to-be will be able to pay for.